The World of the Stage
by LadyPup
Summary: “It is a different world,” Madison replied. “With people in the seats and actors on boards, it’s the world of the stage. Like this, it’s just the world.”


I uploded a different version of this at 4 in the morning yesterday. Then I went back and reread it this morning, and realized it was completely confusing, so I spent most of my day fixing it. Here it is, the new and (hopefully) improved version. There's still some kinks in it, so feel free to give me any and all criticisim.

Same disclamer as always, Les Mis isn't mine, much as I wish it was. The plot and Madison are, though, so please don't take them. I'm especially fond of them, as they've been floating around in my head for three years now. Other then that, feel free to read, enjow, and drop me a review when you're done.

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Les Miserables had had a spectacular run. This had been it's 25 year at London's Queen's Theatre, and though it was still beloved, every one involved knew it was time to stop. A slight melancholy fell over the entire cast, especially the actress playing Eponine.

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The side door into the theatre creaked open, swinging out slowly as Madison inched into the empty theatre. She pulled it closed behind her, going slow enough to keep it from making any noise except for the click as it latched shut. Dani had mentioned that they were aloud back into the theatre, but Madison wanted to be alone and undisturbed. She wanted to be able to say good to Les Mis in private.

Walking between the seats, under the mezzanine, she tried to take in every aspect of the theatre she could. The Queens' had been her home for most of the past year, and Maddie wanted to remember it as it was then for the rest of her life, with all the sets still in place, and only the house lights up. She touched the seats, memorizing the feel of the fabric. Her feet traced the aisle as she stared up, imprinting the designs of the ceiling on her mind. At the front edge of the pit, she turned and stared back at the seats, hundreds of them, extending away from her.

She turned next to the wing sections of the stage, to her perch for several minutes of the show. Clambering up the side of the stage, she pulled herself up into the familiar position from "Eponine's errand." She drew her legs to her chest, as she hummed slightly to herself, clutching her coat around her.

Her coat. Eponine's coat. She'd stolen it after the show, along with her hat. Most of them had taken something, but Madison was the only one to take her costume. Those pieces of clothing were so much a part of her now, she couldn't even comprehend not having them. And, apparently, neither could the fans. Madison giggled at the memory of the stage door, just 15 minutes before. Her exit in both the trench and newsboy hat had been louder then anyone else, even Lawrence. It hadn't been her intent to make herself recognizable as Eponine, but it was a nice benefit.

"Don't judge a girl on how she looks. I know a lot of things I do," she sang softly to herself. Shaking her head, she let go of her legs, dropping them over the side of the set and letting them dangle. She grinned. "Thank god no one here can hear me, I sound like such a sap," she said to the empty house. She jumped off the set, landing easily from practice.

Next, Maddie took a tour of the set, starting at the front of the stage and working her way all the way around clockwise, saying good bye to everything in it's turn. The Barricade set piece she climbed, not just up the face, but all over. She hung off bits, jumped off the mid height sections, and generally did the things you can't do when your supposed to be dying. Coming to the top, she set her feet sturdily, cupped her hands around her mouth, and screamed "Viva la France!" at the top of her lungs. Her face broke into a grin as the sound echoed around the empty theatre. "I've always wanted to do that!" she laughed.

Jumping down, she continued her circuit of the stage. At the wheelbarrow where the flags always ended up after the show, she noticed something missing. Gavroche's little red flag wasn't anywhere in sight. She chuckled. "Nice, Ben, nice. That will be the perfect memoir," she said softly. "I applaud your choice of what to become a thief for."

Finally, she finished her tour. She walked to the edge of the stage and sat down, legs hanging into the pit. She stared back into the theatre, not particularly thinking of anything, just smiling to herself.

"I always like it when it's empty." Madison jumped and turned at the sound of a voice she didn't recognize. A girl was walking down stage towards her, coming out of the shadows at the back of the stage. "It seems so different this way. Like a totally different world." The girl had reached the now standing Maddie, and had stopped about 10 feet away.

She was a very nondescript person. Not that she was unpleasant to look at, no, more like the kind of person you could simply glaze over in a crowded room with out noticing. She looked about Maddie's age and was on the short side, though not extremely so. Her hair was a dirty brown color, a little over shoulder length, and was partially pulled back. Her clothes were even more basic. She wore a whitish, sleeveless shirt, and brown pants that looked like the were just slightly the wrong size. She had a coat under her arm, and scuffed dark brown shoes. She looked a little unsure of herself, and, Madison thought, a little sad. For some reason, Maddie was sure she should know this girl.

"It is a different world," Madison replied. "With people in the seats and actors on boards, it's the world of the stage. Like this, it's just the world." She laughed. "I find it kind of boring this way."

"That's a surprisingly insightful description," the girl responded. She had an untraceable accent, and a lilting, singsong quality to her voice. Her smile was slow and sad. "I never get to see it this way. I like the silence, the ability to hear yourself think." She gazed off into the house for a moment. Coming back to herself, she looked at Madison. "No one ever comes back after the show."

"I wanted to say adieu to Les Mis with out being ridiculed for talking to the scenery," Maddie confessed.

The girl smiled her poignant smile again. "You looked like you were enjoying yourself." Her face changed, and now she was actually grinning, a friendly, cheerful sight. "I think every one has wanted to do that on the barricade. I always have."

"Try it! It's quite invigorating." Maddie matched the strange girls grin.

The girl looked back at the set, then glanced back at Maddie. "Should I?" the uncertainty was back in her voice.

"Yes you should. You sound a bit down, and a good yell always makes a person feel better."

"I don't think that is going to be enough for me," she mumbled, but she turned and walked back to the back of the barricade anyway. Maddie followed, pondering the girl's sudden mood switches. Once there, the girl clambered up with a familiarity that matched anyone in the casts', finding the best place to stand even easier then Madison did. Balancing just as easily, she copied Maddie's earlier performance, cupping her hands around her mouth, tipping her head back, and belting "VIVA LA FRANCE!" at the top of her voice. Her rendition though, didn't just echo back at her. The Queen's theatre seemed to fill up with her lilting voice, extending to every corner of the immense house. The echoes lasted for several moments, while she stood and listened, a smaller version of her grin on her face. When the finished, she turned to Madison and added, "I do feel better. Thank you."

Madison was stunned. The girl had the ability to project as much sound by simply yelling as everyone else did with a mic. Who was this girl? She wasn't in the cast, or Madison would know her. She wasn't in the tech, for the same reason. She knew the sets as well as Madison herself, and she had somehow managed to get backstage.

Blinking, Maddie realized that the girl had climbed down and was staring at her. "I'm sorry. Don't think me rude, but who are you?"

The girl's sad smile returned. "Who am I?" she laughed softly. "I don't think you rude. It's a sensible thing to ask. Though that question is about the most difficult for me to answer." She began to walk down stage, away from Madison.

"Ok, then how did you get backstage? The security people tend to be quite effective."

The girl stopped, and laughed the same small laugh. She turned back to Maddie. "You have an uncanny ability to ask the hardest questions for me to answer."

Madison closed the distance between them, then continued to the edge of the stage, sat down, and patted the spot to her right. "Sit, talk. If you can't say who or how, can you tell me why you're here?"

"That I can answer. The same reason as you, actually. I don't get to come back here after tonight, and I wanted to remember everything about this theatre." The girl clutched her coat to her chest, drawing her knees up and wrapping her arms around them, an exact duplicate of Madison on the side sets. "I love this place. It was all I had left." She was talking more to herself now then to Maddie.

"Why?"

She shook her head. "It just was. That's another one of those hard questions."

"There's a lot of those." The girl laughed. "Why can't you answer my questions? You sound so familiar, and you're obviously upset. Please, tell me, what's wrong?"

"I shouldn't." The girl began to rock gently. "I'm surprised you seem to recognized me. No one else ever does." Madison said nothing, waiting. That same uncertainty was back in her voice, and Maddie figured she would crack and tell her in mere moments. Looking at her lap, she stopped rocking. "I'll try." It was so quite Maddie had to strain to hear it. "I don't know how, and I'll most likely get in trouble, but I'll try." She looked at Madison. "I just want to talk to someone, and you seem like you might understand."

"I don't get to come back because after tonight, every way into this theatre will be barred to me. Every other theatre was closed years ago, but I could still come here. For 25 years, I could always come here." She looked back at her coat in her lap. For several minutes she said nothing more. Maddie waited. Finally she continued, talking to her lap and playing with something there. "I don't enter though the regular door. That's how I got back here, I don't use a door that you would be able to even see. Just like I can't use your door, you can't use mine." Maddie was very confused, but she didn't interrupt. The girl looked up, to the door at the back of the house. "I can never cross through that door there. I've tried. I walk to it, turn the handle, open the door, but when I walk through it I find myself facing back towards the stage as if I just entered the theatre."

Maddie finally had to interrupt. "That's two questions. Now can you tell me who you are?"

The girl ignored her. "25 years. God, that's a long time. I've changed so much since the beginning. Most of it was slow, but I remember the hair. I had curly hair, curly, dark, hair. Then, one night, it wasn't dark or curly. I was shocked." She fingered her hair. "Every time someone new took over, I changed. I grew, or I shrunk. My voice changed timber, if not range. I filled out, or I lost weight. I had no control. I picked up bits and pieces of every one of you. Not just physically, my personality changed too. A few years ago, I was suddenly was so much happier, cheerier. I could tease, joke, and taunt, things that I had thought too joyful for me to ever be able to actually pull off." She grinned again, like she had at the barricade. She was gaining confidence as she talked. "You probably noticed I seem a bit changeable." Maddie nodded. "I actually like that. I was so happy to be happy, I wanted to hug the actress that gave me that. But I couldn't bring up the courage to come meet her, like I have you."

"Wait, you have what?"

"I've met you. I've talked to you. I can see where bits of me came from looking at you, and I want to thank you for them. You gave me defiance, and happiness, which I could always use more of. And you made me grow, if just a bit." The grin returned. "I've just hit 5'4, and I'm proud of it."

"I gave you something? What are you talking about?"

The girl stood. "It's getting late, I have to go."

"Wait, you haven't explained anything!" Madison yelled, jumping up.

"No, I haven't, have I. But I've given you hints. You helped me learn to tease, so this is partially your own doing." The girl winked. "Now I have to go."

Gripping her coat by the shoulders, she shook it and swung it around her. The tan trench coat was way too big, hanging off her small frame, and thought it was worn and frayed, it looked warm. She reached into the pocket, and pulled out a red-ish brown newsboy hat. After smacking the hat onto her fist to return it to it's proper shape, she pulled it on, settling it just above her ears. It too was too bit.

"Good bye Madison. Thank you again, and I'm glad I met you. Maybe we'll meet again next time Les Miserables is preformed." The girl touched her hat, turned, and walked back to the shadows, disappearing into the blackness at the back of the stage.

"Good bye, Eponine."

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An older Madison entered the theatre, a slightly younger woman at her side.

"Well, here you go. Why you want to hang out in an empty theatre, I'll never know. I gave up trying to understand the British years ago." The younger woman rolled her eyes as she spoke. "I've got to go. We've got a cast party at Kyle's place, and Lori promised to show me the fastest subway to get there." The two women exchanged a friendly hug. Pulling away, the younger added, "Maddie, thanks again for coming. That was a long flight just to see opening night."

"I don't mind at all. I love this show, and I would fly to the moon and back to see it." She smiled at her friend. "You were wonderful, by the way."

"I did learn from the best."

"Aw, Kate, that's sweet. Well, I wouldn't want to keep you, so I'll just let myself out." With a second hug, the women parted, Kate waving back over he head as she exited up the aisle.

Madison turned, and walked slowly down the aisle towards the stage. The set was almost exactly as she remembered it. There were a few changes here or there, but nothing major. Reaching the wings of the stage, she hoisted her self up with a bit more difficulty then last time. "That is just pathetic," she muttered to herself. "I'm not that old." Once up she ambled to down stage center, facing the shadowy back of the stage, and took in the set she hadn't seen in 10 years. Smiling, she turned back to the audience, and just stood, hands in her pockets, remembering the feel of the stage.

"It's one of the smallest ones I've ever been to, and there's an intimacy here you could never find at the Queen's." The girl's voce hadn't changed in all the years since Madison had last seen her. The sadness from that first meeting had disappeared, though.

Madison turned, and there she stood, looking exactly like she had 10 years before. Her coat still hung off her frame, and her clothes hadn't changed a bit. She still looked like she was in her early 20's, and her face looked even younger yet with her reckless grin in place.

"I like it. The size that is." By now she was even with Madison, and she stopped as she spoke and gazed into the house. "Not that I noticed until now." She was still smiling that careless grin.

"You seem much happier then when I first met you."

"I am. You can partially thank your friend for that," she nodded to where Kate had exited. "She's cheerier than many have been."

"It's more then that though," Madison mused. "Your whole demeanor is happier."

"Oh, that." The girl began to rock back and forth on the balls of her feet, still smiling. "Yes, I am. I get to pretend again. I get to look out into an audience, and watch the actors warm up. I'm living my story again, really truly living it, not just remembering or imagining it. Then, after the curtain goes down, I can pretend that it's me out there, taking my bows. That afterwards, I'll go back and change out of my costume and go home, to my friends, my family, to people who love me." Her voice softened. "It makes my world more bearable if I get to come down here every night." Despite the melancholy subject of her words, the girl's voice still had a light, happy tone to it, which didn't even sound forced.

"Is that what you do? You relive Les Miserables every night?"

"Exactly."

"Doesn't dying every night, and sometimes twice a day get kind of, well, painful?" Madison cocked an eyebrow at the girl in confusion.

She laughed. "Yes, it does at first. But you get used to it after the first hundred times or so."

"You get used to dying." Madison's eyebrow went even further up. "How can you get used to dying?" she exclaimed incredulously.

"You just do." Madison shook her head in dismissal.

"So you relive your story every night, and though you can come talk to me, you can never leave the theatre. Somehow, you exist here, but not out there." Madison had been working for the last 10 years on how this girl's existence was possible. She still had no idea. Madison could hardly trust she had seen what she remembered seeing after her last show as Eponine. That was part of the reason she had flown 10 hours to get to New York for the opening of the revival of Les Miserabes. She had hoped the girl would make another appearance, so she could prove to herself that she wasn't crazy. She didn't know why, but suddenly she understood why she could only see the girl here. "You can only visit theatres that are performing Les Mis, can't you?" she thought out loud.

"That's right."

"So where have you been for the last 10 years?"

The girl considered for a moment. "Do you remember when you said that there were two worlds, the world of the stage and the world?"

"You have an amazing memory."

"Well, you were right. Your world and mine collide only here, in the theatre. You think you're simply acting, but you're not. You become us, and we become you; we overlap for those 3 hours. The only thing that is the same is the stage, where the story you perform and we relive is one in the same." All this was said in the most direct manner possible.

Madison thought for a minute. "Does that mean all of you live the way you do in the play?" the girl nodded. "But that's horrible! You have, and pardon me for saying this, the worst life ever."

"I know. That's why I love being able to come here." The girl's smile had reverted back to the slow, sad smile of years before. "I can pretend." Madison reached out, and with out thinking, grabbed the younger woman's hand. For a moment they both stood there in silence. Then the girl shook her self, withdrew her hand, and blinked. "But that's why I'm happy." The corners of her mouth turned up into the beginnings of her original grin. "I can have the most wonderful day dreams about being an actress, and singing and the like. Really. I have a spectacular imagination."

A thought struck Madison. "Wait. Do you know how to sing?"

"Of course. I have all of you in my makeup, don't I?"

"Well, then why don't you? Sing, anyway. You could actually make good as a singer, even in that hell hole we call Les Miserables' Paris." She brightened, warming up to her idea. "That way you could actually have something in your world, for when Les Mis leaves Broadway again."

"I actually never thought of that. I always feel like I'm in limbo at home." She paused. "Doing something new never occurred to me." Pondering the idea, her face split into the same reckless grin Madison had seen several times already. She began to bounce. "I bet you Gavy would love to help me out. He loves the attention."

"I could have guessed that."

"I'll try it," she decided. "I'm a day dreamer by nature, so I don't know how well I'll do in the real world, but hey, it's worth a shot," she laughed. In that one moment, she changed from a forcibly happy, resigned young woman, to the 16 year old girl she was supposed to be. "But I have to go. I told him I'd be back by nightfall, and it's getting dark."

"Told who?" the girl blushed bright red. "I thought so." Madison shook her head and chuckled. "You know, I'm not going to say anything. Enjoy your day dreams. You can only be yourself, and I don't think anyone would have you any different. Just, don't go getting yourself killed more then you need to, yeah?"

The girl smiled sheepishly. "I can't promise anything."

"Just try, for me?" The girl nodded. "I don't want to keep you from your Marius. Go, have fun, and I will see you next time Les Miserables is preformed."

"Really? You will?"

"If I'm still alive, I will come. I promise."

The girl stuck out a dirty right hand, which Madison accepted. "There, we shook on it, like gentlewomen. Now I'm going to hold you to that, so you'd better be there the next time I get to come down."

"I will." Madison let go of the girl's hand, and they stood there for a second. Then the older woman reached across and enveloped the younger in a tight hug, startling her. After a moment, the girl returned the sentiment, just as firmly. "Good bye Eponine. I'm glad I got to see you again." This time it was Madison who turned first, jumped off the stage, and walked up the aisle and out the door.

"Good bye Madison."

Ok, did you get all that? Did it make sense? Could you guess any of it ahead of time? Come on, let me know what you think. You know you want to.

Ok, now, REVIEW!


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